Murder suspect Romero has bail held at $1 million cash

TRENTON — A judge set the bail at $1 million cash Thursday for another of the suspected gangbangers charged in a 2012 gunning that left a former star high school basketball player dead.

Mercer County Superior Court Judge Pedro Jimenez told Andres Romero he’d need full cash to get out of jail while awaiting trial for the murder of Daquan Dowling along Route 29 near the War Memorial.

Authorities said at the time the shooting was another lowlight in Trenton’s wars between young men from gangs with names like Sex-Money-Murder and Gangsta Killer.

Dowling, 23, was a basketball player in his days at Trenton High and the Emily Fisher Charter School. His close friend, 19-year-old Jordan Rivera, was shot to death in the summer of 2011.

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Suspect Romero, a star soccer player at TCHS, allegedly took part in the January drive-by for which Anthony Marks and William R. Mitchell, both 24, were charged with murder after they were arrested in June 2012. Romero was at the Mercer jail when a grand jury indicted him for his alleged role in the killing, city Lt. Mark Keiffer said.

Sgt. Chris Doyle, the detective on the case, said Dowling was killed instantly but wasn’t the intended target. The real target was his passenger, who was the owner of the car, but the tinted windows on their vehicle prevented the shooters from seeing that Dowling was driving at the time.